Sweet red fruits and a splash of amaretto give this pudding an Italian spin. Soak the fruit the day before – and make sure your pudding basin fits your slow cooker!
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
Lucy Jessop
Lucy, our former Food Editor creates lots of delicious meals each month. Her recipes are always packed with flavour and they're super easy too!
See more of Lucy Jessop’s recipes
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Ingredients
200g dried mixed fruit
1 x 100g bag berries and cherries (or use 50g dried cherries, 25g dried cranberries and 25g dried blueberries)
100g natural glacé cherries, quartered
zest and juice of 1 medium orange
50ml amaretto
50ml brandy
100g dark muscovado sugar
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
a generous grating of fresh nutmeg
soft butter, to grease
2 medium eggs, lightly beaten
1 medium Bramley apple, about 225g, cored and grated
100g vegetarian suet
50g blanched almonds, roughly chopped
85g self-raising flour
65g fresh white breadcrumbs
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Get ahead
Make the pudding up to the end of step 5 up to 3 months ahead. Store in a cool dry place then reheat as per step 6.
Put all of the dried fruit, glacé cherries, orange zest and juice, amaretto and brandy, sugar and spices in a large bowl. Mix well to combine, cover and set aside overnight or up to a couple of days ahead.
When ready to cook, grease a 1-litre ceramic pudding basin (or Pyrex bowl) with a little butter and line the base with a circle of baking paper. Cut a square of baking paper, about 30cm, and cut the same sized piece of foil. Place the foil shiny-side down on a clean surface and lay the baking paper on top. Grease the baking paper well with butter, then, keeping both together, fold a 3cm pleat into the middle. This allows for expansion during cooking. Switch the slow cooker on to low.
Add the remaining ingredients and a pinch of salt to the soaked fruit and mix thoroughly to combine. Scrape the mixture into the prepared basin and level.
Cover the pudding with the foil and baking paper, buttered-side down, and press around the edges to enclose, while maintaining the pleat. Then secure tightly around the rim with a piece of string – tie twice around the rim of the bowl to make it secure. Trim off the surplus foil and paper, and add a string handle for easy lifting, if your pudding basin has a ridged lip.
Sit the basin inside the slow cooker. Boil the kettle and pour water around the pudding until it comes halfway up. Place the slow-cooker lid on top; it needs to be fully closed, with no gaps. Cook for 10 hours. Remove from the slow cooker and leave to cool completely. Then remove the paper and foil and replace with fresh wrappings, as before, ready for when you want to re-steam and serve. Store in a cool dark place, or the fridge.
On the day you want to serve the pudding, cook in the slow cooker as before, but for 4 hours on the low setting, until piping hot.
We like to serve this with whipped cream spiked with a few tablespoons of amaretto, to taste.
Tip
No slow cooker? Steam the pudding for 4 hrs in step 5 to cook it. To reheat, steam for 1 1⁄2 hrs in step 6.
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A delicious tipple to wash it down with. An authentic pud will be soaked in booze like Cognac, rum or brandy before being matured for months to allow the flavours to really sink in. While alcohol is already in the mix, a lot of it gets burned up when the pudding is set aflame, as is the tradition.
You can use any other high alcohol liquor that you have to hand for flaming the pudding (though not a fortified wine, such as port) and cognac/brandy and whisky are often traditional choices. Port could be used for soaking the fruits for the pudding but make sure it is a sweet variety of port.
If water has entered the wrapped pudding basin then it is likely that the pan was boiling a little too hard, and may also have been too full of water, meaning the water came up and over the top of the pudding basin which makes it easier for water to enter.
We would tend to err on the side of using a spirit with a higher alcohol content (such as rum or whisky) but a fortified wine with a long shelf life, such as a sweet Marsala or Madiera could also be used.
With his wine merchant in Boulogne, Dickens was clearly a Francophile when it came to drink. But, by the time he died in 1870, he had embraced Scotch whisky and left 17 cases in his cellar. Whisky is no less flammable than brandy and, splashed over the pudding, burns just as prettily with the same blue flame.
On Christmas Day, boil or oven steam for 1 hr. Unwrap and turn out. To flame, warm 3-4 tbsp brandy in a small pan, pour it over the pudding and set light to it.
However, if it is difficult then you can use alternatives. A sweet marsala or Madeira wine are good alternatives but if you only have a bottle of rum, whisky or brandy on hand then one of these could also be used.
Completely fine. I always buy my Christmas puddings in the January sales! I think we ate one that was 8 years out of date once. Slightly shrivelled but soon plumped up again with lashings of Brandy!
Some Christmas puddings, made with dried fruit in the traditional way, are fine to be eaten as much as two years after they were made. "Bear in mind if the pudding is alcohol-free, of course, it will last a good while with the sugar content, but it will not last as long without alcohol to preserve it," stresses Juliet.
Since traditional Christmas pudding is made with a variety of dried fruits and nuts along with eggs and suet (animal fat)- the high content of the liquor helps it taste better and better over time, with no risk of spoiling even two years after they are made!
Ideally we would suggest that when the pudding is made it is steamed for 8 hours (the combined time of the first and second steamings) as the steaming is important for the flavour of the pudding. The pudding can then be microwaved to reheat it on Christmas Day.
As for all puddings, it should be stored in a cool, dry place until Christmas Day. For the US our preference would be to use Pyrex mixing bowls for steaming Christmas puddings.
You can use whiskey, rum, brandy, amaretto etc but you can honestly just pick your favourite, the cheapest, the nicest, etc… it's entirely up to you. You mix the alcohol into the fruit at the start of making the Christmas cake, and then you use it to feed the cake until you eat it.
You can use rum, brandy or whisky for spice, or if you like citrus flavours, try an orange liqueur. Cherry brandy and amaretto will also work well if you prefer these.
Rum and brandy are traditional but you could also try sherry. Don't soak your fruit in a metal bowl as this can taint the flavour; use a Tupperware container or a ceramic or plastic bowl covered in plastic wrap.
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Prep time: 30 mins
